The Way We Were

Chapter One:

Pawnee, Indiana, 2015

Teenagers were definitely getting weaker. The teacher sighed. Back in the 50s, they'd all been able to throw the javelin at least a couple of metres and, back in the 1550s, it had been ever further than that. Now, some of this lot could barely even lift the thing.

'Next,' the teacher called impatiently and a boy came jogging forward to take his turn. The teacher barely paid him any attention at all. She wasn't looking for a boy.

She scanned the assembled group of teenagers. The one she was looking for had to be here. Surely, she'd waited long enough. She was in the right place, she knew that, but maybe it still wasn't the right year. There were a couple of possibilities amongst the girls – the occasional hint of muscle beneath baggy sportswear. Some of them were half decent athletes, but they lacked fire. There was no fight in them.

The boy's javelin had thudded into the ground in front of him, but no one had come forward to take him place. Annoyed, the teacher glanced at the queue of students and tried to remember the name of the girl who was next in line. She was perhaps the longest girl the teacher had ever seen and she was whippet-thin. Gangly was the only word to describe her. Gawky with long dark hair and a crooked smile. She was pretty though in an awkward sort of way. After a moment, the teacher recalled her name. 'Erin!' she shouted.

Erin came forwards and grasped the javelin uncertainly. She had the strangest throwing technique and, as techniques went, it was completely ineffective. The javelin somehow landed upside down, wobbled for a moment and then clattered forwards only to roll back towards the girl and end up centimetres in front of her feet.

'Sorry,' Erin said with an apologetic shrug of her shoulders. The teacher sighed again and resigned herself to at least another year of this. The girl she was looking for was clearly not here.

It was lunchtime and the teacher was filling her plate with macaroni cheese. One thing this century had going for it was the food. Pasta had been a revelation to her. She couldn't get enough of the stuff. Sometimes, in her head, she divided up time into Before Pasta and After Pasta. She used other before and afters too, but those were more painful to think about. Best to stick to pasta during the working day. She paused at the desert counter, surveying an array of pastries and wondering how she could slip the catering staff a recipe for nutbread.

Suddenly, she tensed. Something was wrong. She didn't know how she knew, but know it she did. Reaching out with senses which had been honed over thousands of years, she stood quite still and took stock of her surroundings. All around her was the babble and chatter of hundreds of teenagers, the clattering of knives and forks on plates, the beep of vending machines, normal everyday sounds, but, on the very edge of hearing, there was something else too. A sharp rending of the air which sounded very much like a scream.

Then someone was calling her name, not her real name, but the one she used here, and another teacher was next to her. 'There's a gun in the school,' the other teacher said. 'A man's escaped from prison and he's in the school with a gun.'

The teacher had put her tray down, muscles tensing, ready to spring into action. 'Where?' she said.

'The art room.'

And the teacher was running, wishing she had a chakram or a staff or anything more substantial than a PE whistle and a set of keys. Her movements were impossibly fast as she skirted around corners and dodged students and teachers who were all heading swiftly in the opposite direction. They yelled after her to come back, to run away with them, but she couldn't. She'd never run from anything in her life.

The door to the art room was closed, but there were a row of windows facing into the corridor in which she stood and one of those was open. She could hear the terrified muttering of the teenagers inside and, if she stood flat against the wall, between two windows, and looked sideways, she could see without being seen.

A tall man was at the front of the room, gun in his hand. He had a blond girl by the elbow and was holding her pinned against him. She looked very young and she was whimpering, tears spilling from her eyes. 'Come one!' the man was saying, jerking her roughly towards the door, obviously intending to use her as a hostage to evade the police who, by now, must be outside.

The teacher hesitated, considering her options and, as she did, she heard another voice inside the classroom. 'Don't!' it said.

'What did you say?' the gunman asked 'what did you say?'

'I said don't,' and, to the teacher's surprise, it was Erin who'd spoken. She was standing up and moving towards the man and his captive.

'Stay over there!' the gunman warned.

'Erin! Come back!' Someone shouted, but Erin kept going forwards.

'Take me instead,' she said.

'What? You're volunteering to be a hostage?'

'Yes,' Erin said, her voice steady. 'Take me instead.'

'Fine,' the gunman said 'Makes no difference to me.' Roughly, he shoved the blond girl to the ground and grabbed hold of Erin instead. As he turned her around, the teacher saw her face. There was no fear in her gentle brown eyes. Instead, there was fire. The teacher leaned forward a little, allowing herself to be seen. Her eyes met Erin's and an understanding seemed to pass between them. The teacher nodded, just once.

Then all was a flurry of motion. The teacher sprang forwards through the open window, taking a large part of the flimsy wall with her. She launched into a backflip, just as Erin twisted to the right and pulled free of the gunman, giving the teacher room to kick him squarely in the chest. He fell, gun skittering free of his hand. The teacher made two swift jabs at his neck and he lay still and silent. BY the time he woke up, the police were surrounding him and the teacher had disappeared without a trace.